


Right?

by Nyctae



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, Introspection, Logic | Logan Sanders-centric, Sad, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-19 01:23:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22202968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyctae/pseuds/Nyctae
Summary: Logan reflects on significant memories that impacted his life.It goes downhill quickly.
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders & Logic | Logan Sanders, Anxiety | Virgil Sanders/Logic | Logan Sanders, Logic | Logan Sanders & Morality | Patton Sanders
Comments: 8
Kudos: 48





	Right?

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning** : There is self-harm imagery. Don't read this fanfic if any of the tags could upset you.

When Logan was little, his mother would read him a bedtime story every night. They were always magical fables about fairies and dragons and lionhearted princes with morals about respect and telling the truth. Every story ended the same: the prince saves the princess.

Once Logan made the mistake of asking if there could be two princesses or two princes, and the simple question quickly escalated. A hand gripped his upper arm tightly and dragged him to the living room where his father sat on the couch. His mother shrilly repeated Logan’s question to his father whose face immediately hardened. Logan looked down at the floor.

Light and heavy footsteps clattered until suddenly stopping. A whispered, unintelligible argument began in the kitchen before the footsteps returned back into the living room. The couch creaked and groaned as a sighing weight settled. Knees cracked as they landed on the rough rug. A hand—so cold it burned—grasped his shoulder. Freezing fingertips pulled Logan’s chin until he was staring into mourning eyes.

No, there cannot. Boys who like boys are sick. They are wrong. They are disgusting. They are ill. Logan, you cannot be like them. Do you know what that would do to us? Do you want to hurt us like that, honey?

Logan was ill.

Since that night, he has hated fairy tales about princes and princesses, but thanks to the cruel irony of life, he became best friends with a "prince." Though, he liked Roman a lot more than the fictional princes; he even admired him for defying the fairy tales by dating both princesses and princes. But Logan could never defy what the rules. He wished that he could or at least that he could just go to a doctor and get medicine to cure him just like when he got a virus. All Logan could do was pretend he wasn’t as ill as he was; he just had to pretend to be happy and healthy.

_But that was normal, right? It was just like acting, and Roman acted constantly._

When Logan agreed to move in with Patton and his roommates two years ago, he never imagined that anything more than being acquaintances with his friend’s roommates. Life once again surprised him, and he became good friends with Roman, closer with Patton, and then there was Virgil.

He wasn’t quite sure what they were, but he surely knew what he wanted them to be. At the least, they were best friends, and at the most, they were interested romantically in each other. 

It started with fireworks—both literally and figuratively. Roman and Patton begged Logan and Virgil to join them at a friend’s 4th of July party, but they both declined. They decided they’d rather just watch the fireworks from the front yard without blaring music and drunk people.

They watched documentaries on space, low-budget horror movies, and YouTube conspiracy theory videos. They declared rematch after rematch in Mario Kart. They broke the Mario Kart tension over some undercooked pasta with spaghetti sauce that was barely over room temperature. They smiled and laughed as they played with their bounty of dollar store sparklers.

Right before the fireworks began, Virgil put on noise-cancelling headphones and sat next to Logan in the front yard. Earth-shattering booms announced the arrival of the explosions that painted the sky in sparks of every colour.

“Are you ever so tired that a bad idea seems like a good one?” Virgil’s whisper could barely be heard over the fireworks.

A nod.

“Should I do it?”

A shrug.

“I think I might,” Virgil decided, and his fingers drummed against his leg before stopping abruptly. Suddenly he kissed Logan before backing up.

“Oh god, I’m sorry. That was a terrible idea. I shouldn’t have done that,” he rambled, hiding his face in his hands.

Once he recovered from the initial shock, Logan’s shaky hands moved Virgil’s out of his face. Both looked terrified, but Logan smiled gently and kissed his friend’s cheek.

“You’re not upset?”

His head shook.

“Thanks.”

They turned back towards the fireworks to watch the show, and they’d never comment when one hand rested against the other’s.

* * *

When Logan was in preschool, he tried to climb the tree in his backyard. He faced his daunting obstacle, looked around for a sign of his parents, and grabbed a low-hanging branch. He stepped on a rock, pushed under the tree, and hoisted himself up, pulling his leg over the branch. For a few minutes, he sat on the branch, looking over the scenery from a new height. Then he repeated his process onto an even higher branch. Smiling, Logan knew he had conquered this tree.

But then he felt invincible. He stood up once more and reached for another branch. It was just out of his reach, so he shifted closer and closer and closer. He was getting too close to the edge. He kept reaching further and further.

He shifted once more and slipped. Fear yanked his heart into his stomach before he hit the ground with a thump. His knees were scraped, and his legs were bleeding. It was more blood than Logan had ever seen, and it scared him. Was he going to die? It hurt a lot—more than that time he fell off his bicycle during a sharp turn.

His mother found him, softly crying and clutching his legs on the cold, damp ground.

“Logan! What did you do?”

He pointed to the tree.

“Did you fall out of the tree?”

A nod.

The scolding began: “What did I tell you about climbing trees, Logan? It’s dangerous! I told you not to climb trees. What if you had been seriously hurt? What if you had died? Think about how your father and I would feel!”

He sobbed, and his mother sighed before picking him up. She carried him inside to put band-aids on his legs.

“Do you understand why we have rules, Logan? It’s so no one gets hurt. Are you going to start following the rules now?”

Logan nodded furiously. He promised himself to never break another of his parents’ rules again so that he’d never have to feel like that again. He never wanted to hurt and bleed again.

_But change is a good thing, right?_

Logan had heard about self-harm a few times in his life. In school he was only told one thing about it: just don’t do it. The internet regaled him with romanticised cliches and fictional stories passed on as true. He never thought about it much.

A few months after moving in, he heard yelling from upstairs one night. Patton jumped, and his elbow shifted all the pieces on the game board. The rook in Logan’s hand fell on the carpet, and the two rushed up to find the source of the commotion.

The bathroom door was shut, but they could hear harsh whispering from inside.

“Get the hell out, Roman,” a demand came through the door.

“Hey, kiddos, is everything okay?” Patton called after delivering a knock.

Silence.

A shuffling came from inside the bathroom.

“Please don’t, Roman. I promise it won’t happen again. Please, please, please,” hushed voice begged.

The door opened, and Logan’s eyes widened. Virgil’s eyes were red and puffy. He was gripping his forearm while blood dripped from his fingertips into the stained sink.

“He relapsed,” Roman stated.

“I’ll talk to him, okay? Wash your hands first, and don’t force yourself to come back in if you don’t want to.” Patton turned to Logan. “Can you go grab the first aid kit from downstairs? It’s under the kitchen sink.”

The command broke Logan’s trance. he followed the instructions mindlessly, carrying the kit into the bathroom. Virgil was sat on the now clean counter, staring at his swaying legs. Patton took the kit with a sad smile before asking Logan to leave. 

He spent the next hour staring at the ceiling. But it wasn’t really the ceiling he was looking at; it was Virgil. It was Virgil and the blood and the quiet drips and the absolute terror of the situation. He sat for the hour as his mind twisted the event over and over again until he couldn’t remember any of it clearly. 

A few days later, Virgil entered Logan’s room and sat on the bed quietly for a few minutes.

“Do you need something?” Logan asked, turning in his desk chair to look at his friend.

Virgil looked surprised and quietly answered, “Uh, you can keep working if you want.”

“Is there a reason you’re here? Not that I mind your company.”

“Yeah, um, can you do me a favour?” He chewed on his lower lip.

Logan sat down next to him and shrugged, “I mean it depends what it is.”

Virgil fumbled in his pocket before pulling out something metal. He cleared his throat, “So, I… I kinda lied to Patton and Roman, and I feel like I can trust you. I’m sorry about Friday also. Roman kinda started yelling, and I mean, I don’t blame him, but like I didn’t want you guys to know I messed up again. Roman’s being super cautious around me, and Patton’s always on my ass about if I’m okay. And I love them and I know they mean well but it’s kinda suffocating, you know?”

Virgil sighed.

“I let them hide like some blades and scissors but like I still had this, and I don’t wanna go up to them and be like ‘hey only people who care about me I want to let you know I lied to you but don’t hate me.’ I realized I need to actually work on stuff if I want to, you know, not die or anything.” Virgil dropped the small blade in Logan’s hand. “Just throw that out for me, please.”

Logan nodded, setting it on his nightstand. “Of course. Thank you for trusting me. If you don’t mind, where do you even get those things?"

Virgil blinked and paused before responding, “Oh, uh, yeah, I don’t mind. I mean you can use anything. I broke a razor for that, but people use anything like their fingernails, scissors, pushpins, pencil sharpeners.”

“Thank you. I apologize for the question. It’s just something I do not know a lot about. I also do not mean to seem overbearing or anything, but are you okay? I care about you too, and I just want to make sure.”

His friend smiled, ‘Yeah, I am.” Virgil stood up and headed for the door. “And don’t worry, L, you’re not overbearing at all. Thanks for being you. I’ll let you get back to work.”

Logan did as he promised, but the conversation left him with a morbid curiosity. It suddenly became an option. It became a way to regulate his actions and wrongdoings. It gave him a way out when everything became too much. When too many things went wrong. When his parents called and called just to berate everything he’s done. When he wants to be happy and have a relationship with someone, but he can’t—not because his feelings are unrequited—because it was ingrained in him to change himself to make his family satisfied. Not happy or proud. Just satisfied.

Now he was a mess of jagged cuts scattered around his upper legs; he didn’t wear shorts anyway. Half his nights consisted of betraying his friends. He spent his time helping Virgil with coping mechanisms and turned around to do what his friend was trying to change.

Life lied to him. School told him it was not an option, but clearly, it was. The internet told him how romantic of an experience it would be. He was promised a beautiful dichotomy between perfect red lines marring perfect, pale skin. Instead, he was cleaning persistent stains in the bathroom sink while a disassembled pencil sharpener sat on his desk His legs were messy; his hands were always too shaky to create straight lines. His attempts to perfect himself left him more imperfect than before, creating the need to punish himself and continue his cyclical hell.

* * *

Logan doesn’t like to think about when he was younger. He may not have been happy, but he wasn’t miserable. He wasn’t living with a crush that his childhood taught him he wasn’t allowed to pursue. He wasn’t destroying himself in an attempt to fix everything that he deemed incorrect about himself. He wasn’t living in contradictions.

His parents told him anyone who is not straight is secretly miserable, wrong, and sick, but that couldn’t be true. While Patton’s negative emotions sometimes burst the bottle he contained them in, he was genuinely happy and carefree. He gave love freely to anyone and everyone. Though Virgil often kept to himself, he always understood the majority of Logan’s quips and proved himself a tough chess opponent. Virgil never shared a fact unless he knew it was correct. Roman didn’t fall into the categories his parents told him about either because he was always bragging to the three about how he never gets sick.

Logan always told himself that he would stop torturing his mind and destroying his chance at happiness. He always told himself that this night was the last. No more hurting or crying or listening to the insults of his parents’ voicemails in the dead of night after declining their calls.

_But one more couldn’t hurt, right?_

It could.

And it did. That’s why Logan was on the freezing tile of the bathroom floor in nothing but shorts and a short-sleeved button-up. He abandoned his tie and glasses long ago. He was a mess with a bottle of wine and expanding red pools on the ground. He was crying and scared and hurt and alone. It was 1 A.M. No one would bother looking for him. Everyone else was probably asleep.

But apparently not his parents. His phone began to buzz again, and he failed to suppress a sob as he haphazardly smacked the decline button. His phone clattered to the floor at what seemed like 1,000 decibels in the silence of the night.

Logan picked his phone up, lazily wiping the blood covering it on his lower leg. Just another thing to clean later. His head clinked against the bathtub when he leaned back.

He didn’t want to get up yet. Getting up would mean having to clean up, go to sleep, wake up, and pretend everything was okay again. Getting up would be a lot of effort for his exhausted body, and his dizziness would probably make him fall down again. He could get up later.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

“Hey, Logan, is everything okay? I heard some loud noises,” Patton whispered through the door.

Logan didn’t bother answering, but he glanced over in alarm as the doorknob rattled.

“I’m going to open the door to make sure you’re okay.” Logan could hear the worry in Patton’s voice, but before Logan could croak out an ‘I’m fine,’ the knob turned all the way.

Maybe he didn’t have a choice about getting up.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> I hope you enjoyed this fanfic, and please leave any criticism to help me improve my writing.  
> Check me out on Instagram: [@vi.nyctae](https://www.instagram.com/vi.nyctae/?hl=en)


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